Here is a list of all the books I read this year and didn’t get around to reviewing. Some where better than others, but I did make sure to write about all the ones I truly disliked – they’re just so inspiring sometimes. This is the first time in four years that I didn’t read over 100 books – I wonder if I should blame my iPhone.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been rereading Georgette Heyer’s historical romances chronologically. Devil’s Cub is a sequel to These Old Shades (which is one of my all-time favorite of Heyer’s novels) and has as its hero Vidal, the son of Avon and Léonie from the earlier novel. Because the book is set a generation after These Old Shades, it can be read on its own. While this book isn’t my favorite of Heyer’s books, it’s easily in the top ten of her best books. It’s laugh out loud funny, moves along at a smart pace and is peopled by vivid characters. Great fun.

This book is about a man who dies, is sent to hell, somehow resists eternal torture, and is sent back to earth to recruit followers for Satan.

Now before any holy rollers tsk tsk me for reading such a book, if you haven’t already realized, much of Fireproof is tongue in cheek. Brennan manages to make topics like murder, hell, and satanism seem blase, in a darkly comedic way.

Our story begins with Mike Rocks, who used to live in Northern Ireland, until he died. Now Mike is in hell with his demon roommate who can’t seem to effect eternal torture on him. So Satan calls Mike in for a meeting and decides to send him back to Ireland to recruit followers. But besides leaving hell, Mike has another reason to take this journey, and that is revenge. Mike didn’t just die from natural causes, you see. And along the way, Mike meets new associates including a girlfriend who has a very casual attitude about homicide, and a homeless man with peculiar abilities. Satan also sends a helper, the imp, to keep an eye on Mike. That’s because if Mike fails, Satan will sic Cerberus, the famed three headed dog on him.

Strange, but entertaining, that’s for sure. The story at hand, about revenge and all that, is nothing terribly interesting. But the interactions Mike has with Satan, the imp, and basically everyone around him is worth the read. Brennan’s writing is funny and witty, and I enjoyed reading the book.

Clearly I need to improve at posting to the main blog for 2013, and at writing my own reviews. I made it to 43 books in 2012. Not quite the 52 I was aiming for, but I’m still happy and ready to take on the 52 for 2013. I’ll post more of the reviews over the next week

I finished it before 2013, but I didn’t write the review on time. But it still totally counts!

I really liked this book and it was a great one to end the year on. If you believe in free love, drugs and communes while at the same time knowing that things can’t end well, hop on over to my blog and check things out.

Yay, I finished! And I apologize but I’m going to be lazy and post the links to my reviews here. I have been really awful about keeping up my reviews this year and have been rushing to finish them today. Anyways, congratulations to everyone and have a great new year!

(This is the last review I will post, out of order, because I just found I hadn’t published it)

Another day, another great YA novel. Seriously, modern YA novels may be the most reliable genre as far as quality is concerned. The authors do a lot of heavy lifting with the narrator’s voice, using their personality and perspectives in illuminating ways. The characters are original and honest. YA books never shy away from difficult or big topics, like teenage sexuality, rape, abuse, eating disorders – you name it, there is probably a YA novel that has tackled it in a forthright way.

Speak easily takes a place in this tradition. It tells the story of Melinda, a high school freshman who is ostracized from her peers. She hardly ever speaks, withdrawing from her parents and skipping school more and more as the novel goes along.

Melinda is an outsider – shunned even by her middle school friends – because she called the police at a party over the summer, where numerous students were busted for underage drinking. The reason she did so is fairly obvious – especially when she refers to an older student as “IT” and describes how he makes her skin crawl. The novel tells the story of her recovery from the trauma of that night.

The fact that the reader can fairly easily guess what happens does not draw power away from the reveal, as Speak is not so much about plot points as about finding strength and facing the past in order to move on. Melinda’s inability to articulate her experience only draws sympathy from the reader, as she moves through the already harrowing world of high school with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Speak takes on rape and abuse in an unflinching and sympathetic manner, portraying the reality of teenagers without condescending or pandering.

Emma is a light, funny look at high-class society in England. Emma Wodehouse is a young woman of significant means and breeding, who feels that she knows what is best for everyone. She goes about attempting to set up various relationships between friends and acquaintances, taking a young woman named Harriet under her wing and trying to find her a suitable partner.

Things go awry, and one after the other of Emma’s attempted matches fail to work out. She herself, who did not think she would want to ever be married, ends up marrying the only man who dared to criticize her.

Emma is easy, enjoyable reading, but the dirty secret is that Emma, the character, while she is supposed to be satirical, is just thoroughly unlikeable to most modern readers. She is obsessed with class, finds offense in small things, and criticizes others behind their backs – mostly those who, while annoying, are well-intentioned and kind.

At what point robot/cyborg life forms become indistinguishable from humans and deserve the same protections and rights is a question that has been explored in pop culture a few times; the most well-known explorations are Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner and the tv series “Battlestar Galactica”. The fact that technology is nowhere near the point where robots can begin to be anything like humans does not matter; I would argue that these works, while distanced in sci-fi surroundings that make the specifics unrelatable, are about what makes human beings human.

He, She and It is another entry on this topic, which contrasts two stories. The first is a sci-fi story about Shira, a young divorced woman whose son has been taken away by one of the large multi-national enterprise that run society. She returns to her hometown, a lower-tech, independent enclave, and falls in love with Yod, a very human-like robot, who is intensely devoted to her. The second story, as told by Shira’s grandmother, is that of Joseph, a Jewish Golem in the 1600′s.

Both Yod and Joseph were created to protect groups who are marginalized and under threat; in both cases, they are much more human than anticipated, forming their own desires and goals.

While part of the story is what makes these not-quite-human life forms human, it is also about the ways that technology created to have its own intelligence cannot be fully controlled. However, it is not just an exercise in philosophical questions; it is an involving story, even if the technological sci-fi stuff is never very interesting, outside of Yod’s programming. It is a story of Shira changing her own beliefs (Yod is not a person) and falling in love with someone; a story of a mother ferociously fighting for her son; and a story of independent, poorer states fighting multi-nationals for their own independence. It may go on a little too long, but it wraps up in an almost perfect way.